How can I become more flexible? As most mornings I wake up wander to the bathroom feeling like the Tin Man from the Wizard of OZ! My legs feel like wood and my ankles don’t appear to move!

Does this sound familiar?

Table of Contents

How can we improve our flexibility?

First of all we need to understand what we mean by flexibility – it is the range of motion your joints can move through freely and the mobility of your muscles to allow your joints to move.

So you should be able to achieve everyday movements eg, picking things up from the floor, getting up and down from the floor and being able to reach up and get things out of high cupboards!

As we age our bodies change as muscles become stiffer, we move less or we have arthritis or osteoporosis these things can lead to reducing our flexibility.

BUT don’t get into a mind set that just because you are getting older that you expect to be less flexible.

You can do something about it!

We know regular exercise can make us fitter and reduce our risk of cancers, heart disease etc.

So by doing regular stretching and some Pilates we can increase our flexibility and mobility.

Stretching

Stretching is often the part of our exercise routine that we give a miss as we usually do it at the end of our sessions, by the time we get to it we are already on to the next thing we need to do in our lives.

How to get a stretching routine into our sessions

Make it a separate workout focusing on stretching
Do a Pilates class which includes stretching exercises as part of the class
Do a stretching routine at home

If you are not sure where to start then why not try some of these ideas.

Plan your weekly workout a week ahead, write it down so you commit your self to it.

Try a Pilates class if you have never done one before, these two blogs might be of interest to read to help you understand what it’s all about

Why you should do pilates.

Finding the right Pilates class for you.

Stretching at home is fine if you know what you are doing, if you are not sure then our FREE 5 minute stretching video to do in front of the TV might be a perfect solution. Just click on the link below and enter your email address and the video will be sent over to you.